Author Archives: edrick

Burwell Nominations now open — closing April 1, 2007

The Robert Burwell Lectureship in Catalysis

 
The Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by John­son Matthey Cat­a­lysts Divi­sion and admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. It is to be award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North Amer­i­ca. The awardee is expect­ed to lec­ture at many of the local catal­y­sis clubs.

The award is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to one or more areas in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and descrip­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites and species. The Awardee will be select­ed on the basis of his/her con­tri­bu­tions to the cat­alyt­ic lit­er­a­ture and the cur­rent time­li­ness of these research con­tri­bu­tions. The recip­i­ent may be invit­ed to (1) vis­it and lec­ture to each of the affil­i­at­ed Clubs/Societies with which mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry arrange­ments can be made and (2) pre­pare a review paper(s) for pub­li­ca­tion cov­er­ing these lec­tures. Pub­li­ca­tion will be in an appro­pri­ate peri­od­i­cal.

Selec­tion of the Award win­ner will be made by a com­mit­tee of renowned sci­en­tists and engi­neers appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent of The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Selec­tion shall be made with­out regard for age, sex, nation­al­i­ty or affil­i­a­tion. Posthu­mous awards will be made only when knowl­edge of the awardee’s death is received after announce­ment of the Award Com­mit­tee’s deci­sion. Nom­i­na­tion pack­ages should indi­cate the nom­i­nee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, accom­plish­ments, a nom­i­nat­ing let­ter, a sec­ond­ing let­ter and a biog­ra­phy of the nom­i­nee. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of can­di­date’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions should be made as well as a state­ment of the par­tic­u­lar contribution(s) on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the Award must be received by on 1 April 1 2007.

All nom­i­na­tion pack­ages (one ELECTRONIC COPY) for the Bur­well Award should be sent to John Armor, Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety; at jnagcat@verizon.net . Receipt of any nom­i­na­tion, will be con­firmed by an email mes­sage sent to each nom­i­na­tor.

Alexis Bell selected for the 2007 Michel Boudart Award

Pro­fes­sor Alex­is Bell has been select­ed for the 2007 Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize. The Award rec­og­nizes and encour­ages indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions to the elu­ci­da­tion of the mech­a­nism and active sites involved in cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na and to the devel­op­ment of new meth­ods or con­cepts that advance the under­stand­ing and/or prac­tice of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. The Award selec­tion process empha­sizes accom­plish­ments and con­tri­bu­tions pub­lished with­in the five pre­ced­ing years. Can­di­dates are nom­i­nat­ed with­out any restric­tion of nation­al ori­gin, thus reflect­ing the inter­na­tion­al scope of the career and con­tri­bu­tions of Michel Boudart.

Alex Bell has been Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, since 1967. He is a world-class leader in exper­i­men­tal as well as the­o­ret­i­cal aspects of catal­y­sis and has made a num­ber of last­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the elu­ci­da­tion of reac­tion mech­a­nism, the devel­op­ment of struc­ture prop­er­ty rela­tion­ships, nov­el meth­ods for chem­i­cal syn­the­sis, and the devel­op­ment and appli­ca­tion of the­o­ret­i­cal meth­ods for cat­alyt­ic sys­tems. He has ele­gant­ly demon­strat­ed how detailed char­ac­ter­i­za­tion cou­pled with well-defined kinet­ic stud­ies and the­o­ry can be used to help iden­ti­fy active sites and elu­ci­date the con­trol­ling reac­tion mech­a­nisms for a num­ber of impor­tant cat­alyt­ic reac­tions over com­plex met­al, met­al oxide and zeo­lite cat­a­lysts. His detailed efforts have pro­vid­ed unique insights into the con­trol­ling chem­istry for N2O decom­po­si­tion over Fe-ZSM 5, methanol syn­the­sis from CO and CO2 over Cu/ZrO2, the dehy­dro­gena­tion and selec­tive oxi­da­tion of alka­nes over vana­di­um oxides as well as oth­er impor­tant cat­alyt­ic sys­tems. He has demon­strat­ed how the com­bi­na­tion of the­o­ry and exper­i­ment can be exploit­ed to estab­lish the nature of the active sites and thus tai­lor the design of new mate­ri­als. Alex rec­og­nized the val­ue of in situ meth­ods ear­ly in his career and has had great impact on the devel­op­ment of spec­tro­scop­ic meth­ods in catal­y­sis.

Although exper­i­men­tal meth­ods have been fun­da­men­tal to Alex’ suc­cess, he was one of the first to real­ize that the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of plau­si­ble reac­tion inter­me­di­ates can­not always be made by exper­i­men­tal tech­niques. Alex and his group have devel­oped a nov­el bias­ing tran­si­tion state search algo­rithm that can sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fy mul­ti­ple path­ways, thus elim­i­nat­ing the need for expert intu­ition. The suc­cess of this approach was demon­strat­ed for a wide range of dif­fer­ent reac­tion sys­tems and in par­tic­u­lar for reac­tion paths where oth­er known search strate­gies have failed. In the iso­la­tion of actu­al tran­si­tion states, a nov­el “string” math­e­mat­i­cal method was devel­oped that presents a major improve­ment to the cur­rent­ly-used nudged-elas­tic band and con­ju­gate gra­di­ent meth­ods. The meth­ods have been incor­po­rat­ed into the QChem com­mer­cial soft­ware code and when used to mod­el cat­alyt­ic sys­tems will have a last­ing impact on homo­ge­neous, het­ero­ge­neous and bio­catal­y­sis.

In addi­tion to his out­stand­ing research accom­plish­ments, Alex is a leader in edu­cat­ing stu­dents and advanc­ing the field of catal­y­sis and reac­tion engi­neer­ing. He is the Edi­tor in Chief of Catal­y­sis Reviews and is on the edi­to­r­i­al board of many impor­tant jour­nals in catal­y­sis. He has been involved in the orga­ni­za­tion of many events for the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis, where he is the cur­rent Pres­i­dent. In these lead­er­ship posi­tions, and as a spokesman for catal­y­sis in the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing, Alex has had great impact in guid­ing and focus­ing the field of catal­y­sis and in help­ing to set and main­tain the stan­dards need­ed to keep it thriv­ing.

Alex will give a ple­nary lec­ture at the 2007 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NACS) meet­ing in Hous­ton as well as at the meet­ing of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (EFCATS) in Turku, Fin­land. The Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny and is admin­is­tered joint­ly by the NACS and the EFCATS. The Award is pre­sent­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years. More infor­ma­tion on this award and the award process can be found in the Awards fold­er on the NACS home page www.nacatsoc.org.

Professor Robert Davis has been selected for the 2007 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis

Pro­fes­sor Robert Davis has been select­ed for the 2007 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize. The pur­pose of the Award is to rec­og­nize and encour­age indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions (under the age of 45) in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, pro­pos­al of cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of and descrip­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites and species.

Since 2002 Bob has been Pro­fes­sor and Chair of the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia. Bob has made numer­ous last­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the fun­da­men­tal sci­ence of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis with excep­tion­al advances in acid, base, bifunc­tion­al acid/base, and base-pro­mot­ed met­al catal­y­sis. He is rec­og­nized here for his pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the use of in-situ spec­tro­scop­ic meth­ods cou­pled with both steady-state and tran­sient kinet­ic meth­ods to elu­ci­date how oxide sup­ports and basic pro­mot­ers alter the active cat­alyt­ic sites for a vari­ety of reac­tions, includ­ing the selec­tive oxi­da­tion of hydro­car­bons, acid/base con­ver­sions, and ammo­nia syn­the­sis. A dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of Bob’s research is its inte­gra­tion of mul­ti­ple exper­i­men­tal tech­niques for char­ac­ter­iz­ing het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts and the kinet­ics of reac­tions occur­ring on their sur­faces. Bob has employed a com­pre­hen­sive set of spec­tro­scop­ic tools includ­ing extend­ed X‑ray absorp­tion fine struc­ture, X‑ray absorp­tion near-edge struc­ture, infrared, Raman, nuclear mag­net­ic and elec­tron spin res­o­nance, adsorp­tion microcalorime­try, elec­tron microscopy togeth­er with steady state as well as tran­sient kinet­ic analy­ses to deter­mine the local elec­tron­ic and geo­met­ric struc­ture of the active site(s), the influ­ence local envi­ron­ment, and the reac­tiv­i­ty of nov­el sup­port­ed cat­a­lysts under work­ing con­di­tions. This wide array of tools has enabled him to dis­cov­er the fun­da­men­tal fea­tures that con­trol a wide range of impor­tant cat­alyt­ic sys­tems.

In addi­tion to his out­stand­ing research accom­plish­ments, Bob has proven to be a leader in edu­cat­ing stu­dents and advanc­ing the field of catal­y­sis and reac­tion engi­neer­ing. He is the co-author of a rel­a­tive­ly new undergraduate/graduate text­book “Fun­da­men­tals of Chem­i­cal Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing” pub­lished by McGraw-Hill. His lead­er­ship has also been well rec­og­nized by the field as Bob has cho­sen to lead the pro­gram­ming efforts for Catal­y­sis in the Divi­sion of Catal­y­sis and Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers and cur­rent­ly serves as a Divi­sion Direc­tor. He has also orga­nized and par­tic­i­pat­ed in a num­ber of work­shops to pro­mote catal­y­sis in Asia, South Amer­i­ca and Africa for the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion. He is one of the founders as well as the past Pres­i­dent of the South­east­ern Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. He also recent­ly chaired the 2006 Gor­don Con­fer­ence on Catal­y­sis.

Bob will give a ple­nary lec­ture and be rec­og­nized at the 2007 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety meet­ing in Hous­ton. The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the Davi­son Chem­i­cal Divi­sion of W.R. Grace and Com­pa­ny. It is admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years. More infor­ma­tion on this award, the awards process, and pre­vi­ous awardees can be found inside the Awards fold­er on the NACS home page: www.nacatsoc.org.

New Award: Michel Boudart Award for the Advancement of Catalysis

Michel Boudart Award for the Advancement of Catalysis

 
An Award pre­sent­ed joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties.

The Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny, and is admin­is­tered joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. The Award will be pre­sent­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years. The recip­i­ent will give ple­nary lec­tures at the bian­nu­al meet­ings of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM) and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (EFCATS) (EuropaCat). The award con­sists of a plaque or object of art and a prize of $6,000. Up to an addi­tion­al $2,000 will be made avail­able for oth­er­wise non-reim­bursed trav­el expens­es.

The Award rec­og­nizes and encour­ages indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions to the elu­ci­da­tion of the mech­a­nism and active sites involved in cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na and to the devel­op­ment of new meth­ods or con­cepts that advance the under­stand­ing and/or prac­tice of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. The Award selec­tion process will empha­size accom­plish­ments and con­tri­bu­tions pub­lished with­in the five pre­ced­ing years. Can­di­dates may be nom­i­nat­ed with­out any restric­tion of nation­al ori­gin, thus reflect­ing the inter­na­tion­al scope of the career and con­tri­bu­tions of Michel Boudart.

The recip­i­ent of the Michel Boudart Award will be select­ed by a com­mit­tee of renowned researchers appoint­ed joint­ly by the Pres­i­dents of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. The selec­tion shall be made with­out regard for age, sex, affil­i­a­tion, or nation­al ori­gin.

Nom­i­na­tions should clear­ly state the qual­i­fi­ca­tions and accom­plish­ments of the nom­i­nee and should also include a bio­graph­i­cal note and two sup­port­ing let­ters. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of pub­li­ca­tions and patents should be made, as well as a state­ment of the par­tic­u­lar contribution(s) on which the nom­i­na­tion is based.
One com­plete elec­tron­ic copy of the nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the 2007 Boudart Award should be sent to the Pres­i­dent of The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (John Armor; jnagcat@verizon.net) or the Pres­i­dent of The Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of the Euro­pean Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (Roel Prins; prins@tech.chem.ethz.ch) by 20 Novem­ber 2006.

Nominations open for Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis

The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the Davi­son Chem­i­cal Divi­sion of W.R. Grace and Com­pa­ny. It is admin­is­tered by The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years, gen­er­al­ly at the North Amer­i­can meet­ing of The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, where the awardee will be asked to give a ple­nary lec­ture. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $3,000. An addi­tion­al $500 is avail­able for oth­er­wise unre­im­bursed trav­el expens­es.

The pur­pose of the Award is to rec­og­nize and encour­age indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, pro­pos­al of cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of and descrip­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites and species.

Selec­tion of the Award win­ner will be made by a com­mit­tee of renowned sci­en­tists and engi­neers appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent of The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Selec­tion shall be made with­out regard for sex, nation­al­i­ty or affi­I­ia­tion. The award win­ner shall not have passed his/ her 45th birth­day on April 1 of the award year, thus nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments should indi­cate the age and birth­date of the nom­i­nee. [The next award is the 2007 Award year for this Emmett Award (nom­i­na­tions due by Novem­ber 1, 2006). Thus, nom­i­nees should not have passed their 45th birth­day on April 1, 2007.] Posthu­mous awards will be made only when knowl­edge of the awardee’s death is received after announce­ment of the Award Com­mit­tee’s deci­sion. Nom­i­na­tions for the Award should present the nom­i­nee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, accom­plish­ments, birth­date, and biog­ra­phy. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of pub­li­ca­tions and patents should be made as well as a state­ment of the par­tic­u­lar contribution(s) on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments should be sub­mit­ted elec­tron­i­cal­ly to the Pres­i­dent of the Soci­ety along with no more than two sec­ond­ing let­ters.

Selec­tion of the 2007 Emmet­tAward win­ner will be made by a com­mit­tee of renowned sci­en­tists and engi­neers appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent of The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the Award must be received by 1 Novem­ber 2006.

All nom­i­na­tion pack­ages (one ELECTRONIC COPY) for the Emmett Award should be addressed to John Armor, Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety; 1608 Bark­wood Dr., Ore­field, PA 18069 USA at jnagcat@verizon.net . An email receipt mes­sage will be sent to each nom­i­na­tor.

2007 Eugene J. Houdry Award to Stacey Zones

The 2007 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis to Dr. Zones of Chevron Ener­gy Tech­nol­o­gy Com­pa­ny, Rich­mond, CA, USA. The award is spon­sored by Süd-Chemie, Inc., and admin­is­tered by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The pur­pose of the Award is to rec­og­nize and encour­age indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on the devel­op­ment of new and improved cat­a­lysts and process­es rep­re­sent­ing out­stand­ing advances in their use­ful appli­ca­tion.

Dr. Zones pri­ma­ry focus has been in the area of zeo­lites and zeo­lite cat­a­lysts. He has invent­ed over 20 new zeo­lite mate­ri­als. Per­haps Stacey’s most impor­tant com­mer­cial work has been the devel­op­ment of a pro­pri­etary zeo­lite that he invent­ed and is used in the extreme­ly suc­cess­ful sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Isode­wax­ing® cat­a­lyst. This con­tri­bu­tion has led to the expan­sion of the feeds use­ful for the prepa­ra­tion of lubri­cant oils, via the appli­ca­tion of cat­alyt­ic dewax­ing. It was first suc­cess­ful­ly com­mer­cial­ized in a refin­ery in 1996. Since then Dr. Zones has played a role in Chevron’s Cat­a­lyst Group and Tech­nol­o­gy Mar­ket­ing orga­ni­za­tions in devel­op­ing oth­er zeo­lite-based tech­nolo­gies for use in refin­ing, sep­a­ra­tions, and petro­chem­i­cal appli­ca­tions. In addi­tion, Dr. Zones has focused on scal­ing up zeo­lite syn­the­sis routes, via the devel­op­ment of more cost-effec­tive approach­es.

Stacey will give a ple­nary lec­ture and be rec­og­nized at the 2007 North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety meet­ing in Hous­ton. More infor­ma­tion on this award, the awards process, and pre­vi­ous awardees can be found inside the Awards fold­er on the NACS home page: www.nacatsoc.org.

ORCS Presents Three Awards at 21st Conference

Three recip­i­ents were select­ed to receive awards for excel­lence in organ­ic catal­y­sis at the 21st Con­fer­ence of the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Society(www.orcs.org) spon­sored by the Organ­ic Reac­tions Catal­y­sis Society(ORCS) on the week of April 2, 2006 in Orlan­do, Flori­da. The 2005 Paul N. Rylan­der Award went to Dr. Jean-Marie Bas­set, Lab­o­ra­toire de Chimie Organomet­allique de Sur­face, CNRS, Lyon, France and the 2006 Paul N. Rylan­der Award was pre­sent­ed to Pro­fes­sor Gadi Rothen­berg, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ams­ter­dam, The Nether­lands. The 2006 Mur­ray Raney Award, spon­sored by the W. R. Grace Co., was pre­sent­ed to Pro­fes­sor Isamu Yamauchi, Osa­ka Uni­ver­si­ty, Japan.

The Paul N. Rylan­der Award is an annu­al award, spon­sored by ORCS, made to an indi­vid­ual who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the use of catal­y­sis in organ­ic reac­tions as exem­pli­fied by Paul N. Rylan­der. The Mur­ray Raney Award is made to an indi­vid­ual who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to chem­istry and the chem­istry indus­try via cat­a­lyst tech­nol­o­gy based on that orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by Mur­ray Raney.

Bassett’s research has been on the fore­front of the cor­re­la­tion of reac­tions which occur at the active sites of het­ero­g­e­nized sur­face organomet­al­l­lic cat­a­lysts and solu­tion phase reac­tions of organometal­lic cat­a­lysts. This has allowed him to design well defined sur­face cat­a­lysts that cat­alyze reac­tions that some­times won’t occur in the homo­ge­neous phase. His pre­sen­ta­tion was titled “New Cat­alyt­ic Reac­tions Dis­cov­ered via Sur­face Organometal­lic Chem­istry”.

Rothenberg’s research has pro­vid­ed nov­el, lig­and-free cat­a­lysts for car­bon-car­bon cou­pling reac­tions, as well as unique cat­a­lysts for selec­tive oxida­tive dehy­dro­gena­tion. Recent­ly he has devel­oped high-through­put data analy­sis meth­ods and cat­a­lyst descrip­tor mod­els to bet­ter find the best homo­ge­neous cat­a­lyst for a par­tic­u­lar trans­for­ma­tion. His pre­sen­ta­tion was enti­tled “How to Find the Best Homo­ge­neous Cat­a­lyst”.

Yamauchi’s research inves­ti­gat­ed improved meth­ods for prepar­ing pre­cur­sors to skele­tal cat­a­lysts, nov­el bimetal­lic com­po­si­tions, and appli­ca­tion of improved cop­per cat­a­lysts to the hydra­tion of acry­loni­trile and hydro­gena­tion of car­bon diox­ide. His talk was enti­tled “Syn­the­sis and Fea­tures of New Raney Cat­a­lysts from Metastable Pre­cur­sors”.

The pro­ceed­ings of the meet­ing includ­ing the award address­es will appear in a future vol­ume of the Chem­i­cal Indus­tries series.

First Electronic ONLY Version of the Newsletter

The first issue of the 2006 Newslet­ter is avail­able at http://www.nacatsoc.org/nl/2006_01.pdf.
 
At the 2005 Board of Direc­tors Meet­ing, the Board agreed that in the future the Newslet­ter will be con­vert­ed to elec­tron­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion only. Start­ing with this issue, the Newslet­ter will be pro­duced in Adobe Acro­bat and post­ed on the NACS web site for view­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion. If you wish to receive a paper copy, please noti­fy Edrick Morales, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor, at commdirector@nacatsoc.org with your name and postal address. An e‑mail with the high­lights and a link to the newslet­ter will be sent to all NACS mem­bers in our dis­tri­b­u­tion list.

Nominations open for next Eugene J. Houdry Award

Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catalysis

 
The Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by Süd-Chemie, Inc. It is admin­is­tered by The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years, gen­er­al­ly at the North Amer­i­can meet­ing of The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, where the awardee will be asked to give a ple­nary lec­ture. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $3,000. An addi­tion­al $500 is avail­able for oth­er­wise unre­im­bursed trav­el expens­es.

The pur­pose of the Award is to rec­og­nize and encour­age indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on the devel­op­ment of new and improved cat­a­lysts and process­es rep­re­sent­ing out­stand­ing advances in their use­ful appli­ca­tion.

Selec­tion of the Award win­ner wiil be made by a com­mit­tee of renowned sci­en­tists and engi­neers appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent of The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Selec­tion shall be made with­out regard for age, sex, nation­al­i­ty or affil­i­a­tion. Posthu­mous awards will be made only when knowl­edge of the awardee’s death is received after announce­ment of the Award Com­mit­tee’s deci­sion. Nom­i­na­tions for the Award should be made before July 1,2006 and should present the nom­i­nee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, accom­plish­ments and biog­ra­phy. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of pub­li­ca­tions and patents should be made as well as a state­ment of the par­tic­u­lar contribution(s) on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments should be sub­mit­ted in six copies to the Pres­i­dent of the Soci­ety along with no more than two sec­ond­ing let­ters.

All nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the Houdry Award should be addressed to John Armor, Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety; 1608 Bark­wood Dr., Ore­field, PA 18069 USA .

James C. Stevens is the recipient of the ACS award in Industrial Chemistry

James C. Stevens, a research fel­low at Dow Chem­i­cal in Freeport, Texas, is the recip­i­ent of the ACS award in Indus­tri­al Chem­istry for dis­cov­ery and com­mer­cial devel­op­ment of cat­a­lysts used in the poly­olefin pro­duc­tion. This award rec­og­nizes out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to chem­i­cal research in the indus­tri­al con­text.

His work on designed lig­ands for tita­ni­um- and zir­co­ni­um-based cat­a­lysts led to the dis­cov­ery of the “sin­gle-site, con­strained-geom­e­try cat­a­lyst sys­tem” in the late 1980s. Stevens and his col­leagues refined the tech­nol­o­gy, trans­form­ing it “from a lab curios­i­ty to a com­mer­cial real­i­ty” for the pro­duc­tion of poly­olefins. More recent­ly, his col­lab­o­ra­tion with Symyx Tech­nolo­gies led to the dis­cov­ery of a new class of hafni­um-based sin­gle-site cat­a­lysts for the poly­mer­iza­tion of propy­lene. Stevens holds 75 patents and his work have result­ed in com­mer­cial suc­cess for Dow. The cat­a­lysts he helped to devel­op are used in the pro­duc­tion of more than 1 bil­lion pounds of plas­tics and elas­tomers per year.

Tobin J. Marks, a catal­y­sis chem­istry pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, says Stevens is “the kind of superb indus­tri­al sci­en­tist and tech­nol­o­gist who comes along only once in a gen­er­a­tion.” Marks adds that Stevens’ work “has per­ma­nent­ly changed the face of mod­ern poly­mer­iza­tion sci­ence, and has led to a num­ber of mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar process­es that pro­duce clean­er, green­er, more recy­clable, and more pro­ces­si­ble poly­mer­ic mate­ri­als than ever believed pos­si­ble. More­over, due to Stevens’ inci­sive work, the inti­mate mech­a­nis­tic details of cat­a­lyst func­tion are under­stood at a lev­el nev­er before thought pos­si­ble for an indus­tri­al olefin-poly­mer­iza­tion cat­a­lyst.”
 
Past Recip­i­ents

  • 1991 James F. Roth
  • 1992 David R. Bryant
  • 1993 Lar­ry F. Thomp­son
  • 1994 Mar­i­on D. Fran­cis
  • 1995 Lynn H. Slaugh
  • 1996 Gor­don W. Calun­dann
  • 1997 Robert M. Sydan­sk
  • 1998 William C. Drinkard, Jr.
  • 1999 Madan M. Bhasin
  • 2000 Gui­do Sar­tori
  • 2001 Paul S. Ander­son
  • 2002 Bipin V. Vora
  • 2003 Bruce E. Maryanoff
  • 2004 Joseph C. Sala­m­one
  • 2005 Edwin A. Chan­dross
  • 2006 James C. Stevens